


I could be your morning sunrise all the time

by webofdreams89



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Also there is a sex scene, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, And put in a few of my own assumptions about their time in the vault, Bechdel Test Pass, Canon Rewrite, Canon suicide attempt mention a la Motel California, Coming Out, F/F, Female-Centric, First Time, I gave Cora backstory, No one dies fic, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Road Trips, nothing explicit though
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-29
Updated: 2014-12-29
Packaged: 2018-03-02 19:27:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,633
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2823380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/webofdreams89/pseuds/webofdreams89
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Erica and Cora leave Beacon Hills.  They don't look back.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I could be your morning sunrise all the time

**Author's Note:**

  * For [niyalune](https://archiveofourown.org/users/niyalune/gifts).



> Title from Mary Lambert's She Keeps Me Warm. Because I'm super original.
> 
>  

After Allison breaks the circle of mountain ash, after they roam free through Beacon Hills before spending the night ripping Derek apart, Erica comes across Cora in the middle of the woods.  They’ve been free from four months of torture and hell for about half a day now but Erica still doesn’t know how she’s supposed to act.  The woods seemed like a good place for her to run off some of the pent up emotions the she doesn’t even know how to begin naming.

Half a step off the beaten path, Erica can smell her.  She’s far away, but the woods are quiet and Erica knows Cora’s smell anywhere by now.  Guess that happens after spending every waking moment together locked inside a bank vault.

Cora’s sitting alone on the ground, her claws digging deep ruts into the dirt.  She’s been there for a while if the depth of the ruts are any indication. 

“I wasn’t sure I’d see anyone out here tonight,” Cora admits.  Her voice is hoarse, like she’s recently done a lot of talking.  Considering her own brother thought she was dead and she’s been living in South America for six years before the Alpha Pack caught up with her, it’s probably an accurate assumption. 

“I couldn’t stay in my room,” Erica admits, sitting down next to Cora.  She extends the claws on her left hand and digs some of her own grooves next to Cora’s.

Cora looks over at her, then down at Erica’s hand.  “I know what you mean.  Derek has a loft, but it still felt like the walls were closing in on me.

“Yeah,” Erica agrees.

“What did your family say when they saw you?”

“I think they were disappointed,” Erica admits.  “They don’t get to be the parents with the missing kid now.  They’ve always really liked that sort of attention.”

Cora is quiet, but Erica thinks she understands.  Sort of.

“What’s one thing you’ve never told anyone before,” Cora asks to break up the silence.

This is an old game to them by now, started in the vault whenever Boyd was asleep and they weren’t.  Erica thinks it over for a moment.  “I used to have the biggest crush in the world on Lydia Martin when I was twelve years old.”

Cora lets out a sharp laugh.  “Lydia Martin, I remember her.  Redhead that talked a lot?”

“That’s would be her,” Erica laughs.

They sit there together until Derek tracks them down at about four in the morning and bitches them out for nearly giving him a heart attack.  Before they part ways, Cora gives Erica this look that isn’t a smile, but might be if the circumstances were different.  Erica returns it and it’s that look on Cora’s face that she thinks of until she finally falls asleep hours later.

***

When they are first thrown into the bank vault, Erica is really good at keeping track of the time.  She counts it out under her breath and puts a mark in the wall for each day that passed.  She stays awake for days just so she can keep track of the time.  Boyd urges her to go to sleep.  But it isn’t until Cora, who’s been pretty quiet up until that point, snaps at her and tells she is being ridiculous, that she’ll need her strength if they were ever going to escape, that Erica finally caves. 

After that, it’s easy to lose track of time.  The Alpha Pack feeds them sometimes, but it’s never very consistent and Erica is pretty sure that was to help disorient them even more.  It works.

They sleep a lot, they talk a little.  Somehow it comes out that Derek had turned both Erica and Boyd.

“There’s another one of us too.  Isaac,” Erica says, really missing her other best friend.  She’d hated leaving him behind, but knew there was no point in asking him to come too after Scott started paying attention to him.  And now Erica is glad she hadn’t.

“I can’t believe my brother is an alpha,” Cora says.  “It was Laura that was trained for that.  And she’s gone now, isn’t she?”

Erica hates having to tell Cora about it, how their uncle had been the one to kill her sister, but she deserves to know. 

“What were you doing in South America?” Erica asks at one point.

Cora hesitates enough that Erica mentally slaps herself for asking such a personal question.  She’s just about to apologize when Cora says, “Derek and Laura weren’t killed because they were at school, but I’d stayed home from school that day pretending to be sick from wolfsbane exposure.  I snuck out of my room at one point to go meet my friend.  My friend bailed on me, but I decided to go hang out at the arcade.  I didn’t hear about the fire until hours later when I overheard people talking about it in town.  I ran all the way home and saw the house burned to the ground.

“I slept in the woods that night.  I think I was in shock, but by the time morning came around, I’d convinced myself that it was all my fault, that if I’d been there, then I could have done something to save everyone.”  At this point, Cora has tears rolling down her cheeks, but her voice is steady.

“Cora…”

“I just felt so guilty about it that my mind forced me to believe that Laura and Derek would blame me.  Or worse, they’d hate me for being alive when everyone else was gone.  So I ran away.  A few days later, I ran into this friend of my mom’s who’d been heading to Beacon Hills after hearing about the fire.  I begged her not to tell anyone I was still alive.  I’d read that I was dead in a newspaper and wanted to keep it that way.  She agree, though I think she told Laura because sometimes I heard them talking on the phone.”

Cora lapsed into silence after that.

“That’s intense,” Erica says.  She scoots a little close to Cora, lays her hand next to Cora’s

“Yeah.  It really is.”

***

Being back at school is weird.  It’s like no one knows how to treat them anymore, Erica and Boyd the runaways, and Cora the girl back from the dead.  Some of them try, and Erica has to give them credit for that, but it’s hard to explain what they’ve gone through.  Not that Erica wants to talk about it. 

Mostly, people ignore them.  Scott goes out of his way to invite them to hang out (which Erica is pretty sure Body secretly loves), Lydia comes up with a study schedule to help them catch up in school, and Allison even apologizes for what happened before they left Beacon Hills.  Erica thinks she’s completely sincere and can see that it’s eating her up, but after being held captive for an entire summer, a couple of arrows seem pretty low on her list of worries. 

The three of them mostly stick together.  Sometimes Isaac throws his arm around Erica like he used to and kisses the top of her head, tells her he loves her.  It’s nice, but Erica doesn’t feel the same way about it now.  Before, she’d been so happy to have a friend, but now that she has them, she almost feels trapped.

Isaac moves in with Scott and spends half his time making googoo eyes at Scott and the other half bickering with Stiles.  Then they all go to an away lacrosse game, which Erica and Cora stay home from, instead having a movie night, and everyone is all kinds of fucked up after that.  Apparently Scott tried to light himself on fire and Boyd tried to drown himself. 

Boyd becomes obsessed with finding his missing and/or dead sister after that.  Which yeah, Erica can’t really blame him.  She’s an only child so she doesn’t know what it’s like having a sibling, but she likes to think she’d try to find them if they disappeared.  Maybe a sibling would have tried to find her. 

Maybe she wouldn’t have grown up so lonely. 

That’s around the time Boyd starts pulling away though.  After that, Erica knows it won’t be long.

***

There is no way out of the vault.  When they were first tossed in, they checked every inch of wall and floor.  They even tried ambushing the door a few times when the alphas tossed food inside, but they were all tossed back on their asses each time.  And since they were only fed enough to stay alive, they quickly grew too week to try. 

So now there really isn’t anything to do but sleep and talk.

It’s a while later, days, maybe even weeks, when Boyd is sleeping that Cora says, “You never really talk about yourself.”

“There really isn’t much to tell,” Erica says, staring at her hands.  It’s dark, but Cora is sitting close enough that Erica can see the slope of her nose and the flash of her eyes when she sneaks a look.

Cora snorts in a way that’s kind of unattractive, but Erica thinks it’s kind of cute anyway.  “I really doubt that.”

“Well, you shouldn’t,” Erica mumbles. 

Cora seems to ignore Erica’s statement and says, “Tell me one thing you’ve never told anyone before.”

“Why?” Erica asks.

Shrugging, Cora sarcastically says, “Maybe I’d like to know you a little better before we die.

“Besides, Boyd barely talks and I still know more about him than I know about you.  You talk a lot to distract from the fact that you say very little.”

“Maybe I’m just shallow.  Every think of that?” Erica snaps, suddenly angry.

Cora leans close.  “I really don’t think that’s true.”  Erica can feel Cora’s breath on her face and suddenly she wants to kiss her so bad it hurts.  She leans back as casually as she possibly can.

“But you just said you don’t know me, so how the fuck would you know for sure?”

“Just one thing.”

Suddenly, Erica’s sick of the taunting.  She’s sick of people controlling her life while she has none.  She wants to shock Cora, to catch her off guard.  So she leans closer, pulls her most salicious smirk, and says, “I like girls.”

She doesn’t react the way Erica expects her to, doesn’t react the way girls at Beacon Hills did when they’d suspected but never had any proof.  Cora simply smiles a little at her and asks, “Now was that so fucking hard?”

It was actually, but Erica doesn’t tell her that. 

***

They try.  They really do.  Things in Beacon Hills are different, maybe a little better with Scott the alpha now, but it still isn’t enough for them.

They leave behind letters for Derek, for Boyd, Scott, and Erica’s parents, and then hotwire an impounded car at the police station, waiting until the middle of the night when Officer Collins sneaks out to the back and takes a smoke break.

They flee Beacon Hills.  They don’t look back.

***

Living on the road is nothing like Erica thought it would be.  She thought it would be dirty and boring.  It is, there’s no denying that, but it’s also the first time Erica has felt free since she was let out of the vault.  It might even be the first time in her entire life.

Cora is still quiet most of the time, but she looks so much happier now, with the hint of a smile on her face like she just can’t believe it. 

Erica knows she can’t.  She honestly never thought she’d make it out of Beacon Hills. 

Derek calls Cora’s phone a lot at first, but she ignores his calls until one night she steps outside of the hotel room and comes back with tears in her eyes. 

“I think he gets it now,” she says as Erica hugs her, running a soothing hand down Cora’s back.  Erica doesn’t tell Cora that she thinks she’s lucky her brother cares so much.  Her parents haven’t even tried to call her once.  No one in her family has. 

They do a lot of touristy things along the way like going to see the Cadillac Ranch in Texas and Carhenge in Nebraska, but they also make it to some of the classic America road trip destinations like the Grand Canyon where they spend the full moon running through the desert.  Erica crashes into a cactus at one point and Cora laughs the entire time as she pulls needles from her face.  Gazing up at Cora’s smiling face, the way her eyes catch the moonlight, that’s when Erica realizes she cares about Cora a little more than she’d first thought.

***

“I remember you, you know,” Erica says.  She’s lying on her back and staring up at the ceiling even though the hotel room is really too dark to see it.  She thinks she can make out that water stain she saw earlier, the one that looked kind of like Wisconsin. 

Erica feels the bed shift a little, probably Cora glancing over at her.  They started getting one bed after their wallets began getting thinner.  Not that they were very thick to begin with.  Most of Erica’s monetary contribution came from her Quinceañera that almost no one but family even came to. 

“You remember me.”  Cora says it like a statement, but Erica can hear the question in there.  She’s gotten to know the girl well enough by now to tell.

Nodding even though Erica probably can’t see her, she says, “Yep, from school.  Before you left Beacon Hills.  The first time.”

Cora is quiet for a long time, then exhales slowly.  “You do?”

“Mhmm.  You were nice to me.”  Almost as an afterthought, Erica adds in a flirty voice, “And I thought you were cute.”

Cora is quiet again, probably lost in thought like she gets sometimes.

“Do you…do you remember me from back then?” Erica asks tentatively, that usual bravado vanished.

“Honestly,” Cora says in quiet voice, “I don’t remember much from before the fire.  I think I blocked a lot of it out.”

“Like a self-preservation thing?”

Erica feels Cora nod, her pillow jostling Erica’s.  “Probably.”  A clipped, short, very Cora-like answer.

“It’s okay,” Erica huffs.  “Almost no one even knew who I was until I showed up to school in a leather mini skirt.  A lot of people thought I was new.”

“A leather mini skirt, huh?” Cora asks, and Erica can almost see the way Cora’s lips curl up into a smug smile.

“What can I say?  I was a new werewolf and a little off-balanced.  I just wanted to be noticed for once.”  It’s the first time Erica’s ever come close to admitting how lonely she was as a kid.

“If things would have been different, if I would have grown up in Beacon Hills, I think I would have noticed you,” Cora admits.  She sounds like she struggles with it, like she has trouble putting to words what she’s feeling.

Erica doesn’t know if it’s true, if Cora really would have, but she appreciates that Cora cares enough now to think so.

“Thank you,” she says.

Cora clears her throat.  “So, uh, do you still think I’m cute?”

Erica’s breath catches in her throat because, yeah, she really freaking does.  “I do.”

“Good,” Cora says.  And then she rolls over so her body is pressed up against Erica’s side, her hand hesitating before lying flat against Erica’s stomach.

“Are you going to kiss me now, Cora?” Erica asks, whispers.

“Only if you want me to,” Cora murmurs.

Erica reaches up to palm the side of Cora’s face.  “Yes, I want you to.”

Cora kisses her then and her lips are so much softer than Erica would have ever guessed.  She peppers kiss over Erica’s cheeks and forehead and nose before she comes back to Erica’s mouth, which Erica opens to her.  Cora’s touching her like no one has touched her before, treating her the way no one has ever bothered to treat her before.  It makes Erica’s heart pound harder.

When Cora pulls away, she cups Erica’s face with both of her hands and says, “Tell me something you’ve never told anyone before.”

Erica doesn’t have to think about it this time.  “I’m in love with you.”

The sound that Cora makes in the back of her throat at Erica’s words is enough to make Erica surge back up to Cora’s lips.  She runs her hands down Cora’s body until her hands find her hips and she settles Cora between her legs. 

Cora’s hands find Erica’s breasts and she squeezes them gently.  “This okay?” she pants into Erica’s ear.

“Fuck, yes it’s okay,” Erica says, trembling.  “Please, Cora.”

Squeezing a little harder, Cora moves to Erica’s neck and begins sucking kisses there.  She pulls Erica’s shirt off and then unhooks her bra, works her way down over Erica’s collar bones before she takes one of her nipples into her mouth and sucks.  Erica’s breathe catches and she arches up into Cora’s mouth. 

She can feel Cora’s hands skimming just above the waistband of her shorts.  “It’s okay,” Erica assures her, so Cora hooks her fingers under the band and pulls her shorts and underwear down in one go. 

After that, Erica is lost to the words Cora keeps murmuring and the kisses she places onto her thighs and her hot breath on her pussy.  Then Cora flicking her tongue across her clit, building up until its faster and faster and she’s sucking on it, making Erica’s hips buck up to her mouth. 

“Do you like penetration?” Cora asks, and it takes Erica a moment to realize she’s even spoken at all.

“I don’t know,” Erica admits breathlessly.  “But I want you to.”

She feels Cora slide one finger slowly inside her and its like she’s being teased because she needs more and tells Cora that.  Cora grins at her, sliding in a second finger and returning her lips to Erica’s clit. 

Erica thought it would take a lot longer before she’s coming, but it doesn’t.  Cora keeps sucking on her clit and thrusting her fingers inside her as she rides it out and melts back onto the bed. 

“How was that?” Cora asks, crawling up Erica’s body with a smirk.

“You were there.  What do you think?” Erica teases, settling her hands on Cora’s hips as she straddles her.  At some point when Erica was distracted, Cora managed to take her pants off. 

Cora’s smile widens and she leans down to kiss Erica.  “What do you want me to do?” Erica asks, running a hand through Cora’s hair.

Sitting up a bit, Cora bites her lip.

“Just tell me.”

“I want you to watch,” Cora says.

“To watch you touch yourself?”

Cora nods.

“You make that sounds like such a hardship,” Erica says, feeling bold and reaching around to squeeze Cora’s ass.  Chuckling, Cora rolls off of her to take off her underwear before she straddles Erica again.  “You should take your shirt off too,” Erica says, voice strained at she looks at another naked girl up close for the first time.

So Cora shrugs out of her t-shirt and then unhooks her bra, dropping them onto the floor.

“I know you want me to watch,” Erica says, “but can I still touch you?”

“Yeah,” Cora says in a chocked voice. 

Erica reaches up, cupping Cora’s breasts.  They’re smaller than her own, harder, the nipples pressing into her palms.  They feel amazing as she squeezes them a little and bites her lips.  Her curiosity at least temporarily quelled, Erica moves her hands down to Cora’s hips and says, “Okay.”

Watching Cora slide her hands down her body and between her legs is an image that will be burned into Erica’s memory for the rest of her life.  Cora dips her fingers inside her briefly and runs the wetness up to her clit, giving it a few experimental circles before she settles into a rhythm.  She gradually picks up the pace until she is rubbing at her clit so fast, grinding her hips over Erica’s stomach.  She can feel how wet Cora is and god if they doesn’t turn her on so much. 

Cora’s legs tighten around Erica as she tenses and cries out, collapsing forward onto Erica.

“Jesus,” Erica murmurs.  “I think that was the best thing I’ve seen in my entire life.”

Laughing into Erica’s neck, Cora says, “That’s because you didn’t see yourself come.”

Later, after they’ve gone another round in which Erica gets to rub Cora off this time, they lay curled up facing each other. 

“You should ask now,” Cora says.

“Ask you what?”

“Something I’ve never told anyone before.”

Erica rolls her eyes.  “Or you could just tell me.”

“Nah, don’t wanna.”

Sighing, Erica asks, “What’s one thing you’ve never told anyone before, Cora?”

“I’m in love with you too.”

***

After the Alpha Pack tosses her and Boyd into the vault, it takes Erica all of half a second before she realizes they aren’t alone.  Taking a step closer, Erica sees a girl sitting with her back pressed up against a wall.

“Who the fuck are you?” she demands, hands on her hips.

The girl looks like she about their age and damn if she isn’t pretty with her big eyes and straight hair and defiant chin.  “Your new cellmate.  Who the fuck do you think I am.”

“Oh god, not again,” Body mutters, hanging his head because he remembers Erica’s crush on Allison.

“Cora,” the girls says a while later after she’s done assessing Erica.  “I’m Cora.”

“Yeah, okay.  Maybe I’m being irrational.”  Erica marches over and slumps down next to her.  “I’m Erica.”


End file.
